mps.nbcuni.com

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AlexZengNBCUNI
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mps.nbcuni.com

Post by AlexZengNBCUNI »

Hi,
I work on MPS.NBCUNI.COM, which is an internal service/platform at NBCUniversal used for digital sites, like NBC.com, BravoTV.com, Fandango.com.

Our service is used by the brands to inject and execute logic that they are developing/deploying as part of A/B testing or testing new services to integrate with. We also can be used to manage ad execution. While we have no specific issue with the blocking of Ads (still blocked because GPT.js is blocked) or Analytics (ga.js, omniture.js), the addition of mps.nbcuni.com as a 3rd party platform is causing our services to completely fail on all our sites.

an example is on bravotv, the site team is using mps.nbcuni.com to demo functionality that will make video trailers, another example, fandango uses us to deliver timed content (stylesheets and enhanced imagery) around big movie launches.

I noticed that mps.nbcuni.com was added to the 3rd party filter list sometime in early May, and since then we have found some site functionality to also break.
Could someone provide more info on what caused mps.nbcuni.com to be added to 3rd party list, (we're actually internal to NBCUniversal)? I am hoping to have a discussion on how we either be removed from 3rd party list. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

sincerely,
Alex Zeng
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intense
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Post by intense »

AlexZengNBCUNI
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Post by AlexZengNBCUNI »

Hi intense,
thanks for sharing that page w/ me. The google tag service is one type of implementation our platform can be used for, and we do not have an issue with google tag services or DFP being blocked by easylist, but the addition of mps.nbcuni.com to the 3rd party list is also preventing non-advertising business logic from loading. In many situations, our platform is used by the sites to quickly implement logic their CMS cannot do or is only needed for short period of time (as in a/b testing).
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Post by fanboy »

Whats the exact issue? How can someone test for it and steps.

Code: Select all

http://www.bravotv.com/the-real-housewives-of-new-york-city/season-9/episode-8/videos/next-on-rhony-back-to-the-berkshires
Seemed to play fine?
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Post by AlexZengNBCUNI »

hi,
One of the specific services we're providing for bravotv team is to run the minute.ly code on a number of their pages for internal testing.
for example on these pages. Minute.ly code is a service that replaces static thumbnails w/awesome mini-trailers.

Code: Select all

http://www.bravotv.com/below-deck-mediterranean/season-2/episode-4/videos/making-a-perfect-nipple-out-of-fondant-is-not-as
the minute.ly code is working/delivered as expected (filter network tab by minute.ly) and the two teams can continue testing. With AdBlock, and AdBlock Plus on, the code is prevented from being delivered since our service endpoint is blocked.

to test:
step 1. open the page

Code: Select all

http://www.bravotv.com/
step 2. in the browser network tab, note that minute.ly code is delivered and executed
step 3. in another tab, turn on any ad blocker that uses easylist
step 4. refresh the bravo page.
step 5. in the browser tab, note that minute.ly code is not being delivered.

I really appreciate you looking into this!
thanks,
Alex
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Post by intense »

I see minute.ly only whitelisting

Code: Select all

@@||mps.nbcuni.com/fetch/ext/load-bravo-web.js?$domain=bravotv.com
@@||mps.nbcuni.com/request/page/jsonp?$domain=bravotv.com
but ... the first script is managing ads too:
mps._ext._insertedads
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Post by AlexZengNBCUNI »

hi intense,

I'm not sure what you mean by 'I see minute.ly only whitelisting', can you clarify? minute.ly is an example of one library delivered by our endpoint on brands behalf. Fandango will use our service to control their layout for big movie launches. We even provide JQuery libraries for some brands that do not want to include it themselves.

We also allow brands to write client-side libraries for anything they do not want to host themselves (example is that we delivery re-scaling logic for Rio-olympics) or page refresh logic for our News brands. We do not control their functionality or dictate what logic to write. Some have chose to wrap common GPT functions through our service too. We don't have an issue with GPT service being blocked and we've communicated to them that Ads and Analytics will continue to be blocked because GPT and GA will still be blocked.
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Post by AlexZengNBCUNI »

hi Fanboy & Intense, Is there anything else I can do or provide to further this request?
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Post by intense »

only the Easylist authors could help you
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Post by AlexZengNBCUNI »

I see, thanks for the info Intense. Those guys probably get a ton a requests a day and I respect their time. Unfortunately every day that we're on the third-party list is impacting the service for our Brands and causing internal dev projects to be put on hold until we figure this out.

Could someone from the authors list help us out?
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Post by fanboy »

Keep in mind, we cant see your client side scripts, and I tested the page above, seems to load fine here. So for the end user its works as expected, videos play and content shows.. nothing broken.

You need to do some debugging and find out which scripts or filters are causing it.
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Post by AlexZengNBCUNI »

hi Fanboy, The user experience that should happen is that the video's poster image, should be be a mini-trailer instead of a static image.
I just tried it again with AdBlock on/off and can see that our service is still blocked, thus the mini-trailer code and experience is not present.

To provide additional context, we allow our brands to write js snippets that they would like to test instead of deploying into their codebase. mps.nbcuni.com will host and serve it out to the pages they want to test on, allowing for A/B testing.

I've taken a capture of what the experience should look like, but I can't upload the example clips here so I will provide Dropbox links.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8qsvu7xun4hsdr3/AADB8tkemfX_g7q2LejiGo5ya?dl=0
Please take a look when you can.

thanks,
Alex
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Post by rheemix »

It looks like this rule that was added for csnbayarea.com is blocking a core service that's used across all of our companies. This can cause occasional breaking of content and site functionality across all 50+ of the sites by NBC Universal. In addition it is breaking a several our analytics executions and errors are thrown into console.

Across all of our sites, we are using Google Doubleclick for our ads, which are all being blocked correctly by EasyList without this rule.

I have created a PR with an update that should fix the issues our users have been reporting: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/pull/478 . I have also confirmed that ads still remain blocked after applying this change and fixes the issues we are seeing across our sites.


Thanks for your help with this! :-)
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